Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 130
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Gundam series, nor any of the various series which are used or referenced in my fic, so please point that damned lawsuit cannon at someone else, also, don't read this if you are not of legal age to read such material. The story contains possibly disturbing content and should not be read by close-minded people (i.e., people who are easily offended.) Everything in the story is fictional. I am also not responsible for any actions taken by people who read this story and society's problems. I do, however, own my original character; Hope Yamato.
"Kira Jesus Yamato." The amethyst-eyed man called out. "Divinity Gundam, launching!" The Divinity's mouthplate had split down the center, the two halves having slid to either side, revealing the angelic machine's tooth-filled maw.
Meanwhile, due in part to the continued nuclear attacks carried out by ZAFT, the national deficit in the United States of America had soared to over 20 trillion dollars and was in a freefall. Unemployment had risen to the unheard of level of over fifty percent, dwarfing the worst of the Great Depression. Month after month the figures of unemployment came in; half a million per month, 750,000, a million, and finally over a million lost jobs per month, month after month. Then the domino effect that everyone knew was coming hit as the economy just unraveled.
'There's nothing here anymore...' Meyrin Hawke thought to herself, as she along with her husband; Athrun Zala, stood looking over the ruins. Broken skulls and fractured bones, torn cloth faded by the hot sun, all of it buried among rubble and half-collapsed walls. Perhaps half a dozen buildings still stood with their roofs intact, but the glass had been shattered from the windows long ago.
It was only one of many such sites. There were millions of them, perhaps even more. Meyrin could see the place where the explosions had started, marked by the scorched earth and decimated buildings. From that point the destruction spread. There were blackened, charred bones nearest. From a distance, they blended with the ground, but the closer she drew, the more distinguished they became.
Some of the bones were still white in places, from the people curled in shelters and against walls when the explosions tore them apart. There were mostly complete skeletons, and hundreds of jaws with the teeth still attached, many with silver fillings that reflected the sun. Nothing had disturbed them in nearly a decade.
"This place is dead." Athrun finally sighed, stating the obvious as he stood beside her, watching her facial expressions shift between outrage and sadness.
"I know it is." Meyrin grimly replied.
"Should we move on?" Athrun asked after a moment of silence.
Meyrin looked at him. They had been visiting ruined cities in the more heavily war-torn timelines, searching for some sign that not everything in those timelines was destroyed, and at some point, about a week ago, they had become trapped in the timeline in which they now resided. Only a few small rural communities remained, and of even those more than half the population was usually found to be dead on account of the diseases that swept through the survivors in the months afterward.
"I don't think there's any point in continuing." Meyrin sighed.
Athrun regarded her. "What do you mean?"
"Look at where we are, Athrun." She sank down to her knees, putting her palms on the rocky ground. Fine glass shards pierced her hands. "We're trapped within one of the more war-torn timelines, the entire planet is like this. What we once were is gone. Now the people who are still alive struggle every day, slowly going mad as everywhere they search they find only this remnant of what was, and now will never be again. The people are all dead. There is no infrastructure, there is no communication anymore, not in these kinds of realities. We send out calls every day, Athrun, and no one within any of this war-torn timeline responds. The world as it was is gone in this reality, and eventually, if we get lucky, we're going to die too."
He looked down at her, then walked away for a while, until he couldn't hear her. Then he turned around and came back, walking slowly over the uneven ground, avoiding the bones that littered it. Beside her again, he knocked away the heavy skull of someone who hadn't lived to see the horrific aftermath of such planet-wide destruction, at least as it had occured in this timeline.
"They hailed it as 'the vengeance of god', Armageddon." Athrun said, clearing the ground beside Meyrin with his boot, then sitting beside her. "Maybe it was theirs, but it wasn't mine."
'Nor was it mine.' Meyrin dropped her head miserably, staring at the ground and feeling her blood slowly seep into the dust. "I wish I'd gone with them."
Cars and busses rusted and wore down slowly across the landscape, overturned and blackened hunks of metal, more remnants of what was gone. When Meyrin closed her eyes, she could remember the reports that had covered the initial wave of chaos. There had been live footage then, of the same places she visited with Athrun sometimes. Only then, the bodies were not wasted away to bone and stringy hair. Then, the corpses of the dead had retained flesh, rent loose to be picked at by carnivorous birds. The people wore expressions of terror and pain, they were contorted with one another; lovers grasping each other and mothers futilely clutching their children to them.
It was terrifying when the reports stopped. When the networks fell, they expected that any time it would be the same for them. She couldn't remember which had terrified her more; the thought of being killed and looking like those people looked, or of surviving it and having to every day recall what it had been like.
"Now we sit in a world of the dead." Her voice had lost all emotion, she stared blankly at the distant mountains where trees still grew. She began crying, and once she had begun she could not stop herself, her shoulders shook and her throat closed over, her eyes burning. "I want to die, Athrun, I want to end it."
"We can't die, we're immortal." Athrun said. "We just need to wait. The temporal distress beacons in our mobile suits are sure to be noticed by the Excalibur's bridge crew."
Suddenly, Meyrin gazed at the one of the few skyscrapers which was still standing. Through the blown-out windows, she could see dozens upon dozens of figures shuffling around inside. They appeared long and disfigured. They seemed subhuman, they were horrible, they were malicious, they were frightening.
"Athrun, I think we have a problem." She finally said, as they both moved towards their waiting mobile suits and allowed the ziplines to carry them to the cockpit of their respective machines, carefully watching the crowd of figures as they did so. The mass of figures suddenly bolted from the windows, then a moment later, the doors of the building burst open, releasing a flood of screaming undead bodies. The smell of rotting flesh filling the air.
Athrun and Meyrin watched silently as the undead swarmed around the feet of their mobile suits, clawing uselessly at the MCPS armor.
Meanwhile, the Orb Union was about to come under attack by the forces of the new Earth Alliance, lead by none other than Hope Yamato.
Orb's mass driver was easily the most heavily defended location in the entire country, especially given that it was the last and only known mass driver to still be in operational condition on Earth, neither Orb, Celestial Being or ZAFT could afford to lose it, and as such, no expense had been spared in fortifying it in the wake of the fracturing of the timelines.
Entire sand dunes and small hills split down the middle, revealing themselves to be camouflaged firing positions with Gottfried class high energy beam cannon turrets or dual 800mm linear cannons, which could hurl high explosive shells more than thirty miles out to sea. Lohengrin category positron weapons had been considered, but the potential backblast damage they often inflicted on the surrounding environment was deemed too much to risk near the deceptively fragile mass driver facility, and so large caliber hyper impulse cannon bunkers had been emplaced there instead, along with dozens of anti-ship class missile silos buried in the hillsides, along with scores of smaller caliber beam weapons, physical cannon and rocket or missile launcher emplacements for close in and anti-vehicle defenses. Beam shield umbrellas were already forming in the sky above the island and the mass driver, to shield against long range enemy bombardments, and torpedo launchers mounted on the undersea support struts of the mass driver launch rails were just waiting for targets in order to open fire.
"You don't honestly think they're actually going to just stand back and let you take out their military infastructure just like that, do you, Hope?" William Sutherland asked, walking to a halt a few paces behind Hope Yamato as she stood near the top of Leviathan's head, staring through the slowly swirling mist of telekinetically suspended water droplets at the faint orange shimmer of the Glasshouse field, and through it, Nara-Attha city a few miles distant. The city was too distant, and too obscured by the distorting effects of the field and the storm haze, for Hope to make out any details beyond a great deal of activity in the harbor itself. It could be an evacuation, it could just be them digging in. She hoped it was the former, but she was prepared for the latter. She knew her sister and her friends after all, they weren't the sort to just take something like this lying down, for their own good or not. In truth, she was just hoping they got as many of the civilians out of the way as possible, that was her main goal in sending that message.
"Honestly?" Hope replied caustically, not even turning her head to look at Sutherland. "Would you even know honesty if it came up and ripped your face off, Sutherland?" Hope shook her head and chuckled sadistically. "What I believe or what I want doesn't matter, I'm prepared to act either way. If they step back as I ask, so much the better. If they come out to confront us, well, then there will be a great loss of life and they will still be destroyed."
"And you say I'm dishonest? Don't even try to pretend you're not bothered by the idea of going up against your own friends and family like this." Sutherland retorted flatly. "Do you really think you'll be able to do what must be done when the time comes? Can you really kill Athrun, Yzak, Dearka, Miriallia or Cagalli if they confront you?"
"Are you questioning my resolve or my loyalty, Sutherland? In either case, its rich coming from someone like you." Hope still refrained from looking back at her companion. "I have said what I mean to do, and who I mean to do it for. I have once more drawn my line in the sand, and though I will not look forward to fighting Athrun or the others, neither will I avoid it if they come looking for me. I am a human, Sutherland. It's taken me a long, long time to realize that, but now that I have, there is no going back to the life I lived before, any more than you yourself could or would. My first responsibility is to the people of Earth, my second is to my pursuit of justice and morality, and my third is to humanity as a whole, ZAFT included. If I could end this war without killing anyone, I would. If I could end this war with words and treaties instead of combat, I would. Since I cannot do either of those things, I will end this war, by whatever means I can. Even if Orb must become my battleground in the process."
"And what about these reports we've gotten from the troops in the African Theatre, about whatever it was that so decimated the Kraken and Megaladon? Our instuments have detected a great deal of activity on the ZAFT communications networks, and we've gotten reports of large ship movements in low orbit in the last hour. Regardless of what Orb does, ZAFT is planning to fight and fight hard for their mass driver. We can expect them to hold nothing back." Sutherland pointed out.
"I should hope they don't." Hope said, her frown becoming a smile for just an instant. "They had their chance to break us once and for all at Seattle. Now it is our chance to break them on their territory, and show the citizens of ZAFT firsthand just what sort of terrible, awful conflict they have embroiled themselves in." Hope finally glanced over her shoulder at the robed and hooded figure of Sutherland. "Whatever superweapon or new Gundam ZAFT might have, it can't be any worse than me, and I'm prepared for that. Are you?"
"You needn't worry about me. Unlike you, I was never the sort to take stupid risks and push myself beyond my abilities." Sutherland answered haughtily. Hope thought about pointing out a certain time in a certain desert when a certain person tried to pilot the GAT-X105 Strike Gundam without any skill or training and only ended falling flat on his face, but why go through that sort of argument all over again? Though Hope could feel Leviathan's amusement as she picked up on her train of thought and saw the past situation play out as Hope remembered it. Sai Argile may have been more collected and reserved than her on a general level back then, but even Sai had his moments where he did some very, very stupid things too.
"And are you ready to fufill your part of my plan? I asked you and your people along because you're supposed to be experts in this sort of thing, but if I can't count on you to follow my plan because of our personal disagreements..." Hope began to say, only to be interrupted.
"I'll do as you have asked, don't fret. Given who it's coming from, its an inspired plan, I doubt ZAFT or Orb have any inkling of what you have in store for them. No doubt they are completely freaking out right now, thinking you intend to douse them with some form of nanoweapon or anti-matter bomb." Sutherland smiled in a predatory fashion.
"If they think that, they know me less than I thought they did." Hope replied with a shake of her head. "Though Cagalli did mention the previous invasions of Orb. Understandably, she seemed rather distressed about it."
Sutherland merely shrugged. Despite his studied nonchalance, Hope did not believe a single word he said. Sutherland knew something. It was just a hunch, a feeling, nothing that Hope could define. But she knew that William Sutherland was lying. Perhaps it was Leviathan sensing the dishonesty...no matter how good Sutherland was at concealing his emotions and thoughts from Hope, doing the same to Leviathan was beyond the capabilities of a simple human being. Perhaps, if Sutherland had not been around, Hope might have been tempted to fudge things a little...it wasn't like she was wearing a watch and counting the seconds. But after castigating the other Alliance leader for his own dishonest tendencies, it would hardly be right to not stand by his promises now.
Hope let out an inaudible sigh, wanting to conceal her own distaste of her current actions, not wanting Sutherland to be put on guard too soon if possible. "You should return to the Exemplar, we only have a few minutes remaining and I don't intend to let them think I was just bluffing. Given how fast you move, you'll need that time in order to get into position."
"Yes, make fun of an injured man, that's classy, Hope." Sutherland retorted frostily, as he stamped away, carefully balancing himself on the uneven and sometimes slippery craggy skin of Leviathan's back. Hope watched him go, ready to go to his aid if he did actually end up slipping and falling, all other things aside, it was only polite to help someone if they happened to fall.
It had been only five minutes since the attack began, and already the Destroy Gundam had landed on the coast, its targets were Orb's military facilities, once they were gone, the Earth Alliance would pull back and wait to see the results.
Orb Union Astrays and Murasames, along with Aile Daggers, Jet Daggers, Launcher Daggers and Sword Daggers discarded by the Alliance, and GuAIZs and GINNs discarded by ZAFT and repurposed by the less-bigoted Orb Union, fired with everything they had at the massive mobile armor, but the positron reflectors took it all with nothing to show for the assault.
"How can we stop that thing?" One of the Launcher Dagger pilots asked.
"It doesn't matter!" A GINN pilot responded. "We have to hold it here! We won't let these assholes have their way with us!"
As though to slap the Orb Union in the face for their defiance, the Destroy's massive main cannons fired, obliterating several city blocks and everything within them.
"It's just one enemy!" One of the Astray pilots yelled. "The mobile suits are holding back! Surround and destroy it!"
Following the order, the Orb mobile suits began to swarm in from all directions, firing their rifles and missiles at it. A pair of BuCUEs, left over from the last war, charged at the Destroy, holding their fire and hoping to get beneath it and attack it from a position where the positron reflectors would do no good.
The Destroy's response was to fire the twenty composite plasma cannons mounted on the circumference of its backpack, obliterating dozens of mobile suits and sowing even more destruction across the city.
"Hope!" Sutherland's voice announced. "ZAFT drop pods incoming from above!"
"Got it." Hope said as her machine, the GAT-X777S Purity Gundam, which was essentially a copy of the legendary ZGMF-X10A Freedom Gundam, glanced that way. "Treize, Nena, take care of them."
"Yes, ma'am." The two pilots chorused.
The OZ-00MS Tallgeese and the GNW-003 Gundam Throne Drei rapidly shot into the sky. Treize hefted his machine's multi-phase beam rifle at one of the seven drop pods and fired, destroying it in a flash of fire, before immediately shifting his aim to another and repeating the process twice more. Nena, meanwhile, used both the Daini and Hitotsu to finish the remaining four.
From the burning wreckage, though, a half-dozen GOUFs and four Blaze ZAKU Warriors emerged.
"Hmph." Nena snorted. "Go, Fangs!"
As though responding to the verbal order rather than the manipulation of controls, the eight Fangs slid out of their locks, then shot from their storage units on the Drei's upper legs, soaring upwards at the ten ZAFT mobile suits. The pilots desperately opened fire on the Tallgeese and Drei, but the two Alliance pilots responded with their own weapons, blasting four units instantly, and the Fangs cleaned up the rest seconds later, allowing Nena to recall them.
The Tallgeese and Drei began their descent. As they did so, Nena looked over the devastation.
"How can anyone be this inhuman?" She murmured to herself.
The Destroy was single-handedly pushing back all that stood before it. Its mobile suit escort had, thus far, done little more than deal with the ZAFT forces dropped from orbit. But that was about to change.
"Hmm? What is that?" Hope murmured as two dozen large heat sources approached. "Zamza-Zahs?"
Indeed, the Orb Union had deployed all of the Zamza-Zahs in their current arsenal against the Destroy.
All of the Destroy's weapons fired at the Zamza-Zahs. The cloud of mobile armors quickly dispursed, dodging the blasts aimed at them, and instead rushed down and used their positron reflectors to defend the city.
"We won't let you Earth Alliance bastards kill any more innocent people!" One of the crewmen of the mobile armors shouted.
"I sympathize with you." Treize said. "But unfortunately..."
"We have a job to do." Nena finished. "Hope, leave this to Treize and myself. Our weapons will get through those reflectors easily."
"You heard the lady." Hope said. "Continue current mission."
As the Alliance forces complied with the order, a dozen ZAFT drop pods streaked through the sky. The pods quickly opened and unleashed their deadly cargo; reinforcements consisting of ZAKU Warriors and ZAKU Phantoms equipped with Blaze, Gunner or Slash Wizards.
As the ZAFT reinforcements landed, a massive pair of hanger doors opened on the opposite side of the island nation, and with the simultanious roar of dozens engines, along with a cloud of glowing afterimages and GN particles, the huge aerial aircraft carrier known as the Aigaion sped into the fight, a pair of shimmering white beam blades igniting along the leading edges of the wings, as countless anti-aircraft guns, flak cannons, air-to-air missile launchers and beam machine cannons opened fire, instantly filling the sky with a deadly barrage of beam blasts, machine gun rounds, missiles and flak.
"Targets in range." One of Lexi's holograms announced from the sensor console as the Katsuragi's bridge sank down into its combat state. Distance, 4500 and closing. Enemy is on course for Orb and launching mobile suits."
At the communications station, Maya Ibuki peered forward thoughtfully. "So they're just going to open fire without bothering to negotiate."
"Not if we have anything to say about it." Misato said. "Tristans, Isolde, Neidhardt, target the area around the enemy warships and fire. We'll force them away from the coast and then hit them with the Tannhäuser."
The Katsuragi's guns boomed and its missiles arced through the sky towards the approaching warships, which plunged to the side and threw up a wall of CIWS fire.
"Okay guys, since there wasn't time for a briefing, we're fighting to protect Orb, so don't fuck up." Maya said from her console. "Are you ready?"
"As ready as I'll ever be." Lunamaria Hawke's voice answered. Misato glanced up at the brown-haired communications officer and nodded.
"Then let's kick some ass!" Maya grinned.
The winged battleship shuddered as its catapults fired, the Eclipse and Twilight went rocketing out, and Misato sat back and steeled herself for a fight.
Kira Yamato threw his Divinity Gundam forward with a shout, a glowing white beam saber extending from the end of his rifle. Up ahead, a crimson Blaze ZAKU Warrior flung up its shield to deflect the blow, only for Kira to level off one of the Divinity's twin buster rifle in its left hand and vaporize the ZAKU with a searing yellow column of energy. But from the flames a Slash ZAKU plunged down towards him with a sweeping swipe from its beam axe, and Kira jammed the Divinity backward to dodge the blow.
The ZAKU charged forward, but a moment later a wave of beams plowed through it and tore it to flaming shreds, and in a blue and silver blur, the Savior Gundam shot by in mobile armor mode.
"Not having such a great day, are you, Undefeated of the East?" Shiho giggled.
Kira frowned back. "What the hell are you talking about?" He asked, storing the twin buster rifle on his machine's back
"Ah, I'll explain later." The Savior arced upward and went spiraling after the ZAFT warships. Kira shook his head and returned his attention to the oncoming team of red ZAKUs, the ones which had decended from a black Eternal-class cruiser which now floated a few miles off shore. A Gunner ZAKU sent a shimmering blast of red plasma streaming towards the Divinity; Kira threw his angelic mobile suit aside and returned fire with his own beam rifle, only for another Blaze ZAKU to streak in from above with its beam rifle blazing. Kira pulled back behind his beam shield, sparks flying around him, and waited for his opportunity.
"We'll do this the way we planned." Shinn said, clenching his fists around the Eclipse's controls as his Gundam sailed into battle. "There's an old warship wreck up there."
Luna smiled. "Don't worry, I know what to do."
With that, the Twilight whirled out of formation and set down softly on the charred hulk of a burning and abandoned Alliance aircraft carrier. Shinn glanced up ahead, at the force of mobile suits on approach. He could feel their fear, they were discouraged and desperate, and now there were well over three dozen mobile suits on their way in, weapons primed. They raised their guns and opened fire.
The seed burst in Shinn's mind, the beam wings snapped to life, and the Eclipse roared forward with its quantum crystal anti-ship sword drawn.
A wall of afterimages rushed up around the Gundam as it effortlessly danced around the hail of searing energy blasts, and with a resounding shriek, the Eclipse rushed in and slashed its first victim in half. The bisected IWSP Dagger exploded, only for a ZAKU Phantom with a Gunner Wizard to back away and level off its cannon. The Eclipse blasted forward, slammed its left-hand palm cannon clear through the ZAKU's cannon, and then ripped it in two with a sword stroke. A Blaze ZAKU Warrior lunged up from behind, beam rifle leveled off, and Shinn spared it a glance just as a beam blast from the far-off Twilight Gundam plowed through it from the right and blew it apart. Shinn backflipped over the cloud of flames and rushed down after the survivors, who had all backed away for distance and let loose a shimmering barrage of beam fire.
"Three of you down." Shinn grunted, and slammed down the booster as he saw his chance. "And here's four!" The closest Jet Windam seized its beam saber and flung itself forward with a downward hack, the Eclipse pounded the shining blade to the side with its sword, then slammed its palm cannon into the Windam's chest, and blew apart the blue mobile suit. Less than two seconds later, a wave of beam fire raced out of the sun and claimed another pair of mobile suits; a Slash ZAKU Warrior and a Launcher Dagger, and as the ZAFT and Alliance mobile suits backpedaled, the Eclipse seized its chance to rip one of the straggling mobile suits; a Blaze ZAKU Phantom, in half at the waist.
Shinn scanned the remaining mobile suits, waiting for them to make the next move, the fear pulsing from their cockpits.
"Did you guys really think you could do this without being punished?" He asked quietly. The enemy mobile suiits broke their formation and opened fire; the Eclipse snaked its way through their energy blasts and charged.
The Divinity Gundam let out an ear-shattering shriek as it suddenly turned to the Destroy Gundam, which had now been forced out over the ocean by the relentless barrage of weapons fire from the Aigaion.
"What do we think we're doing here?" Kira asked himself as the Divinity's wings of light flared into existence and the angelic mobile suit blazed towards the Destroy. "What are we doing to this world?"